Complex dynamical systems such as air traffic management and control are facing increasing demands from private, commercial, and military operations. Vehicles such as airplanes, ships, and other mobile platforms are able to meet stringent safety, efficiency, and performance requirements through the integration of complex on-board computer systems. Such complex on-board computer systems work not only with other on-board equipment but must communicate with complex systems of other mobile or fixed platforms' computer systems. While such complex systems can be designed to interact with each other in a variety of ways, they must in the end be subject to supervisory review and control by a human operator. Thus, one prime goal of a traffic management and control tool is to help human operators guide their vehicle consistent with the requirements of the given traffic surveillance scenario.
Complex systems utilized for air traffic management, as well as, guidance and control often rely on human-machine interfaces to present information to pilots and operators. One important human-machine interface in traffic management, as well as, guidance and control of vehicles such as aircraft is a display system that depicts information not only about the own-ship's state information but also about the traffic environment including information on nearby traffic aircraft. While display systems have been designed to satisfy guidance and control needs for navigation purposes and traffic information needs for surveillance purposes primarily separately, the increasing complexity of air traffic management and control requirements is driving the need to integrate the situational awareness information with aspects of display systems that present information on guidance and control of an aircraft. However, the increasing amount of available traffic information in relation to the limited display space, as well as, the need for an intuitive guidance representation, often create a contention that poses a serious challenge of providing meaningful context to human operators.
Moreover, as an important human-machine interface, display systems generally have to be shared between multiple applications, often displaying the status information of multiple systems. For example, an aircraft depicted as a traffic symbol may transmit information suitable for navigation, surveillance, and communication purposes. Such information may be utilized, at various stages, partly by the own-ship's navigation system, partly by the surveillance system, and partly by the communication system. The processed information may also be displayed at multiple display interfaces. Thus, human operators such as pilots have the difficult task of integrating the displayed information of multiple systems in a meaningful and efficient way not only to gain situational awareness of the traffic scenario but also to guide their vehicle in a manner consistent with the traffic scenario.